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<p>One’s race is loosely correlated to his or her experiences and in turn perspectives. Do we risk a degree of ideological homogeneity in a meritocracy?</p>
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<p>I don’t want socioeconomic AA because that, too, would just be another way to sneak white students into elite colleges. Asian students manage to be objectively qualified regardless of socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>No, I don’t want socioeconomic AA. Why denigrate poor student’s accomplishments, right? Hold them up to the same standard? The spirit behind racial AA is that racial groups were denied the opportunities that would allow them to excel today. Your argument against racial AA is that it’s unfair to take away spots from people just because of past crimes. Why then, should middle-class and upper-middle class people suffer because of the misfortunes of the poor? It’s not my fault that Jimmy from Kentucky is poor. Why should he get preference over me?</p>
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<p>I am fully aware of the fact that the Asian applicant pool is the most highly merited of any ethnic segment, as I explicitly asserted in Post #357.</p>
<p>Again, the sheer fact that class sizes are not unlimited makes it quite inevitable that Affirmative Action causes many less qualified students to enter into the slots of those that were more qualified.</p>
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<p>If I got dinged from every Yale-caliber university I applied to (and I applied to a lot of them) then I obviously wasn’t Yale-caliber. I’d have to make do with being Chicago or Berkeley caliber. That’s hardly a cruel fate.</p>
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<p>Your comment rises closer to the level of an indication of racial supremacy than any of mifune’s do. Neither of you, though, seems to be racist.</p>
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<p>Which is to say, Affirmative Action for less-qualified whites (and even Affirmative Action for blacks) leads to less-qualified whites entering to slots that would otherwise be given to more-qualified Asians. Why don’t you just admit that you are in fact an beneficiary of Affirmative Action as a white person? That the fact that your affirmative action isn’t antithetical to the traditional conception of meritocracy is another form of white privilege?</p>
<p>You haven’t denied that you were a beneficiary of affirmative action. You just try to frame affirmative action as an issue of Asians and whites against Latinos and blacks, when in fact, the issue of affirmative action is really Asians against everyone else.</p>
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<p>Actually, as I asserted earlier, socioeconomic AA would undeniably largely come to the benefit of minority applicants and does not simply “sneak white kid into elite colleges.”</p>
<p>And no, socioeconomic AA does not denigrate the achievements or low-income and low-asset students because it places their accomplishments within an objective framework. These students’ families cannot afford two years of SAT tutoring or private piano lessons or tuition to send their children to private schools or afford PSEO opporunities at the state university or afford summer programs among other educational luxuries which provide distinct opportunities to increase one’s admission chances.</p>
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<p>There’s no logical incongruity there. He is asserting that poor people should be offered a benefit because their impoverishment is disadvantageous to success. The fact that no one is at fault is logically consistent with his finding fault with the argument that wrongs of the past can be vicariously atoned.</p>
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<p>Were it the case that Affirmative Action would lead to the decrease of Asian enrollment, I would admit it because that doesn’t conflict with some predisposition to believing that Asians are intrinsically more academically competitive than all other races. mifune, however, cannot conceive that whites aren’t all that competitive on average. He believes that the average white student at any given school is just so much better than minority students, and that every minority student has taken away a spot from some more qualified white applicant. He measures merit based on white applicants. If a student isn’t as good as white applicants, than the student isn’t deserving.</p>
<p>I think the very idea of measuring merit based on what whites get is highly racist. Why not measure by Asians since they are more competitive? I say we should. When we do, many whites are cast in the same positions of minorities. Unqualified. Affirmative Action admits.</p>
<p>If I were racist, I would start assuming that all non-Asians are affirmative action admits.</p>
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<p>Whereas blacks and Native Americans shouldn’t be offered a benefit because they were purposely and forcefully impoverished for generations, which has been disadvantageous to success? </p>
<p>If socioeconomic AA isn’t ‘vengeance’ against non-poor people, racial AA isn’t ‘vengeance’ against Asians and whites.</p>
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<p>No, nothing he has said indicates this.</p>
<p>He has explicitly communicated that he acknowledges that Asian applicants, on average, are more qualified than are Caucasian applicants. This is factual. It’s also factual that Caucasian applicants are more qualified, on average, than African American and Hispanic applicants. </p>
<p>Reasonably, he did not extend this reality into the distortion that “every minority student has taken away a spot from some more qualified white applicant.”</p>
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<p>Even if I were a beneficiary of AA, I would in no way feel privileged that there is any system that perpetuates raced-based considerations in the college admissions process. Also, AA it is not a question of Asians versus everyone else since whites do not receive anywhere near the same benefits as other minority groups. Thus, if you were to divide the ethnic groups among those “receiving AA” and those “not receiveing AA,” it would divide whites and Asians among other ethnic groups. However, not all minority groups are treated evenly. By simple intuition, we can rationalize that blacks receive admission privileges similar to those of Hispanics, while Native Americans receive the greatest benefits of all due to the dearth of representative American Indian populations at AA-practicing institutions.</p>
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<p>Nope. In the absence of racial affirmative action, socioeconomic affirmative action would benefit white applicants by far. Socioeconomic affirmative action only assumes that money is the obstacle that a student has to overcome. The reality is quite different. Is a black student that grew up in Camden and attended a failing school to be held to the same standard as a white kid that grew up on a farm in Kansas just because both of their household’s make the same amount of money? Though one may constantly worry about the bullets buzzing around his head and the gangs trying to recruit him and the other only has to really worry about the work on his safe farm, according to socioeconomic affirmative action, they should receive the same consideration.</p>
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<p>What objective framework? How do you measure just how a student’s accomplishments should be weighed? Is a 2100 from a kid with a household income of $20,000 a 2200 or a 2300? What if he goes to a magnet school, does that cancel out socioeconomic consideration? What if he works a job, does that make it more potent? Does the fact that his father is absent matter?</p>
<p>When you’re able to give me a mathematical matrix that spits out a value for objective stats like GPA and SAT that considers socioeconomic factors, come talk to me. Until then, the assertion that socioeconomic affirmative action would place student accomplishments on an ‘objective framework’ is erroneous.</p>
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<p>Yet, contrarily, many Native Americans and blacks live healthy, prosperous lives in the current generation and are not presently afflicted with the thoughts and perturbations of previous social transgressions. Racial-based AA (for the zillionth time) is a subjective measure of one’s current social status because the level of affliction cannot be quantified by any means, nor can the differences in their personal perspectives as a result of their skin color. Socioeconomic AA is not preferentially treating individuals, but rather seeks to recognize any extenuating circumstances that may have been detrimental to successfully fulfilling one’s ultimate potential. It does not lower any standards since success and further accomplishments would have undeniably become more accessible through the betterment of social and economic circumstances.</p>
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<p>You don’t seem outraged that legacy status, athletic recruitment and even race-based Affirmative Action all work to help white student enrollment. </p>
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<p>As I’ve already proved with sources. Whites receive Affirmative Action in the form of legacy status (this is undeniable) and athletic recruitment. At a school like Yale, 10% of any given incoming class has legacy (more than the enrollment than either the black or Latino enrollment). Roughly 15-20% is recruited athletes, most of which are white - because most sports are like crew, LAX, tennis or squash. There is little overlap between legacies and athletes, and even if they were, it’d still be 20%. If three quarters of athletes were white - and that’s a fair guesstimate, 30% of Yale’s white enrollment (15% of Yale is white athletes and Yale is 50% white) white enrollment have received some sort of affirmative action. </p>
<p>But ignoring that ridiculous proportion of affirmative action admits, let’s just consider the fact that at least 15% of Yale which is non-URM and non-Asian gets affirmative action. That group is white. And 15% is greater than 9% or 8% (the respective enrollment of black and Latino students).</p>
<p>So, in short, you FAIL. Whites get MOAR affirmative action benefits than any group. They get it in two forms.</p>
<p>Can a mod or someone just rename this thread ““Race” in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 7” please…</p>
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<p>It is well-documented that the minority groups who benefit from current AA policy have the lowest incomes in society and would thus become the primary beneficiaries of socioeconomic AA. Also, in your reference to absolute extremities in the case of the black student perpetually burdened with external hazards, this case would inevitably confer more advantages than any socioeconomic policy since all burdens that limit one’s success must be included into the overall evaluation of an applicant. Skin color itself, however, does not directly or automatically supply oppression to any individual.</p>
<p>NearL, we will continue this tomorrow.</p>
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<p>And many do not:</p>
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<p>[More</a> Black Children Living In Poverty - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/11/national/main558061.shtml]More”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/11/national/main558061.shtml)</p>
<p>I think America’s past has a lot to do with why some quarter of blacks are poor. Not working class, but poor.</p>
<p>But let’s stop thinking about the massive difference in poverty that is a direct cause of America’s racist past. Let’s look at wealth:</p>
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<p>[PolitiFact</a> | Black and white family net worth disparity true](<a href=“http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/22/john-edwards/black-and-white-family-net-worth-disparity-true/]PolitiFact”>http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/22/john-edwards/black-and-white-family-net-worth-disparity-true/)</p>
<p>I think America’s racist legacy also has something to do with the huge wealth disparity between whites and blacks and Hispanics. This is undeniable and it has huge implications.</p>
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<p>The entire point of my example with the black kid from the ghetto and the white kid from Kansas was that you can’t quantify someone’s ‘level of affliction’ with income either. Growing up on Chicago’s Southside is not the same as growing up on a farm in Kansas even if income levels are the same. So any arguments about quantifying anything inevitably fail.</p>
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<p>If you are giving someone preference because they’re poor, you’re still giving them preference, so your statement is false. </p>
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<p>Surely, growing up as an African-American or Hispanic male is a traumatic experience. I have African-American and Hispanic friends and even I can tell that people treat them differently. They get followed in stores. They are assumed to have bad intentions until they prove the contrary to be true. People treat them differently and they have to recognize this and act accordingly. Even as an Asian male, I can recognize this, because I face the same thing to. The only thing is, those expectations are rarely a burden. It doesn’t suck that people rarely question my competence, moral fiber or intellectual ability. But I imagine that, if people did that to me on a daily basis, it would wear away at me. I imagine that, if I were not a very strong person, I would be bitter. I imagine, that, if the world always expected nothing of me, I might be much more likely to be nothing. </p>
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<p>Why not just try and fix social and economic circumstances before college?</p>
<p>Honestly, mifune, this is fun but I don’t think I can continue much longer. Let’s just agree to disagree.</p>